


The Lighthouse

by black_cat_1347



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depressed Dean Winchester, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Love Confessions, M/M, Requited Love, but it gets better, this is happy at the end I promise, written while listening to the night we met
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27641680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/black_cat_1347/pseuds/black_cat_1347
Summary: After 15x20, we all need to imagine a better life for our favorite hunter. Here's one of those possibilities. Wherein Dean is depressed but Jack helps out a little (a lot).
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 61





	The Lighthouse

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic that I'm ever posting. I felt like if I was ever going to do this now would be the time.
> 
> Only rated T for language.

8:00. It’s when his alarm always goes off. Since that day, Dean doesn’t know what else to do. He had to keep it together, not for himself but for Sammy. He still didn’t talk about it. Sure, he told Sam that Castiel died to save him, but he couldn’t bring himself to bring up what Cas had actually said to him before the Empty took him away. It stuck out in his mind like a lighthouse on the darkest evening at sea, like a shining beacon calling him home.

_You changed me, Dean._

_I love you._

When he was sitting on that floor, the damn handprint on his shoulder, unable to process what had actually happened, Dean hadn’t let himself cry.

_It’s not over. Sam and Jack, they still need you._

That’s what he told himself. But now, well, Jack doesn’t need anyone. Sam, he needs his older brother, but Dean just might need him more.

It’s at breakfast when Dean brings it up, clearing his throat until Sam looks at him sideways.

“Everything okay?” Sam asks.

“Actually, there was something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Dean says. Sam looks at him with those expectant puppy eyes. He rips off the band-aid. “The last time I saw Cas. Uh, he told me something. And I still don’t know what he meant by it. How that was his happiness.”

Sam is quiet for a long minute. He’s still looking at Dean, but his expression has changed, softened a little, like it always does when he brings up Cas. Dean knows that Sam also lost a friend, and it hurts him, which is why he feels bad putting this on him. But Dean’s going to combust if he doesn’t say something soon.

“He said he loves me,” Dean says finally, when it’s clear Sam is waiting for him to talk. He’s not proud to admit that his voice breaks, but it does. Sam’s mouth falls open just slightly. “It was different, though. He was crying, and I - do they even feel like that? Can angels feel that, love? Is that even possible?”

“Cas has been human before,” Sam says gently. He sounds like he’s walking on eggshells. “But I think he was capable of, of feeling things, even before. He rebelled against heaven for _you_ , Dean. Everything he did, it was for you.”

Then why should Dean have to feel like crap after this? Why does it feel like the end?

“I think he was scared,” Sam continues. “I think he knew for a long time but he didn’t want to tell you because he didn’t want it to end.”

“But that’s exactly what happened,” Dean says. Sam sighs and looks down at his nearly untouched plate, hair falling into his eyes. Dean doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stomach food after this conversation. He doesn’t know why he even made breakfast in the first place. He should have just stayed in bed with Miracle and waited for the feelings to pass him by like they usually do, in time.

“Do you think-”

Dean cuts himself off abruptly, because he doesn’t like where that question was going. But he has to. He has to get it out, just to see if he’s not actually going crazy like he thinks he is.

“Do you think he meant that?”

“As opposed to?” Sam asks.

“Did he mean that he loves me, or that he’s in love with me?”

“Oh,” Sam says, so quietly that Dean’s not even sure if he heard anything at all. Miracle chooses that moment to bound into the room excitedly, and Dean tosses him a strip of uneaten bacon from his plate, placating him for the moment. He can’t bear to look at Miracle for a minute, and remember the hope he felt when he first saw the dog in a quiet, empty world. Now it feels like all hope is lost.

Dean stands up with his plate, because Sam isn’t saying anything and he can’t sit there anymore. He needs to wash the dishes, maybe do some laundry. His favorite pajamas are dirty from a few nights ago, when he couldn’t sleep so he went outside to just sit on the grass and look at the stars. That had lasted for about three minutes before he chided himself over the dramatics of it all and went back inside. But he had sat up in the library instead, staring blankly at the shelves, wondering how to move on.

The rest of Dean’s bacon goes to Miracle, and his eggs go into the garbage. He puts the plate into the sink and then just stares down at it, hands gripping the edge of the counter until his knuckles turn white.

Sam clears his throat and Dean turns around.

“I saw the way he looked at you, Dean,” Sam says. “For years now. He meant it, you have to believe he did.”

“And why should I do that, huh?” Dean feels like slamming his fist into the wall, but he loves the kitchen too much to do that. “He left. He’s gone, Sammy, he left us. He left me.”

“He saved you,” Sam counters. “Dean, we’re Winchesters. We don’t get the happy ending, we never have. Let’s just focus on the good memories, dwelling on what could have been won’t help.”

No matter how much Dean wants to fight Sam on every damn word that comes out of his mouth, it’s a futile plan that never goes into effect. He just shrugs and turns back around. Way to try having that conversation. The only person who might be able to understand Dean isn’t here. He’s gone, and Dean barely even got to say goodbye.

Sam tries to get Dean to go on a hunt. He knocks on his bedroom door and when Dean doesn’t answer he just opens it. Dean turns off the bedside lamp and turns away until Sam gets the message and leaves him alone.

It goes on for a few weeks. Sam goes on hunts solo now, since that first time. For two or three days at a time he’ll be gone, and Dean won’t have to hide how he’s feeling behind the closed door of his bedroom. He can sit in the kitchen and not eat, sit in the library with a book open, not reading a single word. He knows it’s getting near a point of no return when Sam brings home a pie when he comes back from his most recent hunt, and not a single part of Dean even wants to eat it.

“Dean,” Sam says, eyebrow raised. “Dean, you need to get out of this. You need to come on a hunt, or, or go outside. Do something so that I know I’m not about to lose you too.”

And he’s done it again. Dean, being selfish. What’s new? He immediately hates himself for putting Sam through that, but a big part of him is still in that state, what he refuses to call depression, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

“I don’t know if Cas was in love with me,” Dean says. “But I know I’m in love with him. And I need some time, Sammy. I just need more time.”

Sam lets him go without saying another word.

Slowly, Dean learns to live with it. He stops looking around whenever he thinks he hears something behind him, like Cas showing up out of the blue like he used to. He knows it’s not ever going to happen, and honestly he’s stopped hoping that it will. Six months after Cas saved him, Dean goes outside the bunker and drives to the nearest nursery. The girl who’s working there, a peppy little blonde who gushes to Dean about her dog, shows him enough pictures that Dean relents and shows a few of his own, she helps him find what he’s looking for. A little sapling, something that the girl says will become a sturdy old thing in time. Maybe not for him, but for his kids and grandkids, she says.

Dean doesn’t tell her that’s unlikely. He doesn’t tell her that he’s doing this for the man he loves, the man he lost. He gives her the best smile he can manage, the movement foreign to his muscles, as she checks him out and hands him a print-out with planting instructions. She says she hopes he comes again, and Dean nods, but he doesn’t think he will.

Sam finds him later that day, on his knees in the dirt not far from the bunker, using a little shovel to make room in the ground for the roots of the sapling. He says nothing, but sits down and watches Dean work. When the sapling is planted and standing upright, Dean sits back, looks at it. It’s small and green, and he hopes it survives the winter. What a fucking disappointment it would be if it didn’t.

Dean throws the little shovel away and stands up abruptly. He walks away, not checking to see if Sam is following him or not. He doesn’t really care right now.

8:00. The morning starts out like every other. Dean hits the off button on his alarm clock, Miracle jumps up into his bed and Dean pulls him in close, rubbing under his chin. They walk to the kitchen together to get breakfast started, because Dean does try to eat at least one meal a day. Sam is right. Dean needs to be there for him. Even if he can’t bring himself to go on a hunt yet, he still needs to keep himself alive for his little brother.

Sam is out on a hunt, but on his way home already. It was a quick salt and burn, he had texted Dean, with a fire emoji. Dean had rolled his eyes and texted back something without emojis.

When Dean sits down at the table with a plate, ready to eat some toast and not much else, Miracle lets out a whine, and then a bark. He barks a few more times, looking at the entryway and then at Dean and then back again.

“Is Sammy home already?” Dean asks to the empty air. Miracle barks again. Dean stands up, toast forgotten, and he takes a knife from the kitchen counter. Even in the safest place on earth, it doesn’t hurt to be armed when you have no idea what you’re going to talk into. There’s no one in the first room, so Dean goes to the library. He checks between each shelf and finds nothing. And then he turns around, and -

“Jack?”

Dean doesn’t believe it. All those months ago, Jack had made it seem like that was it, the last time they would see him. He had things to take care of, a world to oversee. He’d told them that he would be in their hearts and then disappeared, so why show up now? Unless Dean has well and truly lost it.

“Dean,” Jack says. “Yes, I am really here. Not for long, I think.”

“Why’d you come?”

Dean could ask how he’s doing, but Jack is god, now. Dean imagines he doesn’t have time for small talk.

“I told you not to pray to me, not to sacrifice for me,” Jack says, looking Dean deep in the eyes, like he’s so much older than he actually is. “But I didn’t say you were not allowed to ask things of me.”

“We want you to visit, Jack, that just didn’t seem so necessary when you were going around being god.”

“That is not what I mean, Dean,” Jack says. “I think you know that.”

He snaps his fingers and disappears once more. Well, so much for that.

Dean sighs, turns around, and walks into the wall. The wall which wasn’t there a minute ago. The wall which isn’t a wall.

“Dean.”

That voice, that Dean never thought he would get to hear again. The last time he heard it, it was fake. It had sounded tinny thought the phone and Dean had dashed up the stairs and had his hopes dashed by the devil.

But this. This right here, it doesn’t feel like a trick. Least of all because Lucifer is dead and gone.

“Cas?” Dean asks, and he’s not at all embarrassed to admit that his voice breaks. He’s pulling Castiel into a hug before the angel can even respond, arms all the way around Cas’s sturdy frame, and Cas’s arms come around him and they stand there for longer than Dean would have ever allowed. Saying nothing, barely even taking in a breath. Dean is terrified to his core that one little gust of wind will blow this whole house down to the ground. “Cas,” Dean repeats, close to Cas’s ear where his chin rests on Cas’s shoulder.

“I am here, Dean,” Cas says.

“How are you here?”

It’s not the only question, but it has to be the first. He pulls back slightly from the hug to look Cas in the eyes.

“Jack,” Castiel says simply. “He took me from the Empty. The Empty went to sleep and I went to heaven with Jack. And then he brought me here.”

“Here,” Dean echoes. “To me.”

“To you,” Castiel confirms. The look he gives Dean is one of pure longing, and it makes Dean think about all the times that Castiel has looked at him throughout the years. Stared at him, into him. That Cas knows his soul, has held it in his hand and pieced his broken body back together to raise him out of hell. That after all these years, after so many people have come and gone from Dean’s life, finally the one he needs the most is here, back once more, something real and tangible. Dean does the only thing he can do.

“I love you too, Cas,” Dean says. The thump in his chest at getting the words out is worth it for the absolutely breathtaking smile that breaks out on Cas’s face, the most genuine thing that Dean has ever seen. He feels like it’s not possible that he should get to have this, that he does have this, but here he is. Here he is, stepping impossibly closer, crossing the line of personal space to put his hands on Castiel’s shoulders and lean in, slowly. Dean would love to say that fireworks went off when their lips met, but he’s realistic. And honestly, Cas’s hand coming to his face, pulling him in close like he’ll never let go, it’s more than enough.

Dean will have to explain it to Sammy, when he comes back from the hunt. That might not be for a while, though. Dean wants to make the best of this time, this moment.

“Come with me?” Dean asks.

“I go where you go, Dean,” Cas says. Dean leads them to his bedroom. The lamp is on, illuminating the furniture and the weapons that decorate the room, despite the fact that Dean hasn’t used them in months. His bed is made, the single pillow on the side where Dean always sleeps. A fleeting thought runs through his mind: _you might need to take that other pillow out of the closet, someone might want it_. Castiel enters the room after him, trepidation in every step, and once he’s inside Dean closes the door behind them.

“I haven’t slept a good night in a long time,” Dean says, sitting down on the bed. Castiel still stands near the door. Dean takes off his slippers and lays down, arranging the pillow in the center of the bed for now. “I thought maybe I could, now.”

“I will watch over you,” Cas says. He strips off the damn trench coat that Dean loves almost as much as he loves his angel. The suit jacket goes too, and his shoes. His shirt gets untucked from his pants, and then Cas is sitting down next to him, propped up against the headboard. “Sleep, Dean. I will be here when you wake.”

“Promise?” Dean asks. He’s already starting to drift, but he searches out Castiel’s hand first, for something concrete to hold on to.

“Always,” Castiel says.

Dean sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading if you got this far. I hope it wasn't too bad. I also apologize if Jack wasn't written well, I haven't seen all the episodes he's in, I only saw enough to fall in love with him.


End file.
